"We are aware of the situation and are planning a system software update to resolve this problem," Sony told the site in an email.

@AskPS_UK, an official PlayStation account on Twitter, offered further clarity and a solution.

"We've since fixed the issue, and it wasn't bricking consoles, just sending them into a crash loop that can be quickly fixed in under 5 minutes," @AskPS_UK tweeted, before outlining a fix.

We've since fixed the issue, and it wasn't bricking consoles, just sending them into a crash loop that can be quickly fixed in under 5 minutes. Delete the message on the PS mobile app, go into Safe Mode, use Option 5, console back to normal. ^DB

One player said team members got the malicious message while playing Rainbow Six: Siege.

"A player from the other team used a dummy account to send the message and crashed my entire team," Redditor Huntstark wrote in a post Saturday. "We all have had to factory reset."

People who've been hit by the glitch say that the message remains on the console and resets it each time they try to turn it on, so they've used a factory reset to wipe it. However, this also deletes all the games and saves on the console. The approach suggested by Ask PlayStation UK would prevent that.

As a precaution, PS4 gamers can set their messages to private by going to the console's Account Management menu, then Privacy Settings and Personal Info, where they can change their message settings to Friends Only or No One.

First published at on Oct. 15 at 6:47 a.m. PT.Update on Oct. 16 at 5:25 a.m. PT: Adds Ask PlayStation UK tweet and solution.